PC Master Race

What doesn't make sense is that these companies want to force Valve to be a free advertising and leads service for them, and force them to help funnel their own customers away by using anti-consumer practices (the third party company being the one using anti competitive practices).

Part of the contract to sell on steam is this exact pricing point issue.

If it was another third party store yeah bad look since it was first party you can see ubisofts start of the enshittification. In the short term drive down the price to drive out all other third party resellers stores.

Then bam jack up the prices on first party after driving out all the competition. Then its just like streaming instead of 3 library's you have 24+ and even higher prices. But if there was proof they did this to gog or another third party store then throw the book at them.

I just wish they would compete on features not so much price. Because while i like paying less for games. I have seen the amazon model of drive out everyone else with price with VC money then jack up the price. When we have less choice.

This is an older article. Ubisoft was (and is?) pulling some shady shit here though. What they're doing:

• Selling the base game via Steam for free (limited features, but most important stuff is there) or a frequently discounted amount for full access (think less than 10 bucks).
• Selling a bonus starter pack that can be used for the Steam game for a larger amount (used to be 20? Looks like 15 now) exclusively via Ubisoft's own platform.

So for a new player to get started, they'd get the base game for free, with Valve paying for all the costs related to the download infrastructure, etc..., and then pay Ubisoft directly for their ingame starter gear, bypassing Valve entirely. This was just an attempt by Ubisoft to skirt by Valve's rules.

Valve is extremely lenient when it comes to this sort of stuff. But they're not going to allow a publisher to abuse the system to essentially get free game distribution via Steam while still making a profit via this side channel. It's basically a way to bypass the Steam key resell rule, where Steam keys may not be resold for lower prices on other platforms (but you don't have to pay the 30% fee when you do).

To put Ubisoft's case to the extreme, imagine a game comes out for free on Steam, but opening it opens up another storefront where you first need to pay 60 bucks to actually play the game. Does it make sense for Valve to continue offering their services here if they are blocked from making any money off of it?

I think one reason is that given the stage in capitalism we've been living for some time now has completely fucked people's understanding of what markets, competition, monopoly power, and so on are. Not people's fault really. We live in this system, we observe and learn about it from what it claims about itself. We have to do extra work to have any different understanding. Most people don't have extra time for unpaid work.

The thing being described is exactly how Amazon fucked the market. If someone can understand why Amazon is bad (business-wise) then they can understand why Valve needs to be held accountable. Lest they become the Amazon of vidjagames

There is no justification if what you describe is true. But a lot of people are willing to give Valve benefit of the doubt, assuming it is false until proven in court. Especially coming from Ubisoft of all places.

I'm not in favor of these practices by Valve either. It seems like the group you're describing are interpreting this as Valve wont let anyone rip off their customers so you can be sure you're getting it at the best price there, rather than Valve wont let anyone change the narrative that you're getting it at the best price there and should buy everything there.

if you’ve had any personal experience with ubishit you’d know why

i’m not going to waste my limited time and energy caring about ubi

I don't know if this is the same policy, but one thing Valve doesn't let you do is sell Steam codes for cheap on external platforms, because that evades their platform fee while still using Steam for distribution and makes it hard for the Steam listing to compete (since it's more expensive).

That might not apply here because I feel like Ubisoft has their own distribution infrastructure on UPlay, but it could be that they were selling the Steam version on UPlay for cheaper.

Anticompetitive to ensure everyone sells it at the same price?

Valve are not the only company to do it either, I know razer used to but I don't work in a retail environment anymore to know if that is still the case.

Yeah, that’s the same monopolistic shit Amazon does.

Asked about this rule, Newell repeatedly denied it exists, even when shown internal communications seemingly showing Valve employees enforcing it: "Valve does not have a policy or practice of dictating prices to third-party software developers on other platforms."

either he's lying or out of the loop, because a lot of publishers reported that rule does exist.